Our first week living in an RV

Well, we've done it!  We live in an RV.

Here's the TMI rundown, for anyone interested.  This week has been a time for making our ship sea-worthy.  Yep, we put the cart before the horse and moved in.  This week we just barely failed the smog test, and took it to San Bernadino where a mechanic worked on it in his yard after his day job.  He said we have a great engine, it just needed a tune-up.  We thought our fuel-gage was broken, but once we decided not to fix it up now and put more gas in the tank, it started working.  Yay!  Michael has been hard at work on the roof, and a young man in our congregation has been helping him.  Soon we won't have to put a tarp up there every time the dew point threatens us.  I know it rains a bit here in December, so that's our priority.  We found out our sewage system works great, and that was a relief since we used it before testing it.  Something's not right with our water pump, so we've been hauling water in.  Fortunately the reservoir works, so we can dump water down the sink.  This week we are still parked in our land-lady's yard, and have had electricity and internet that way.  So there's the details.  Overall, I'm feeling excited about this transition.  I've really wanted this life, and there's a part of me that has to pinch myself wondering if we've really taken this step.  Now all we need to do is get a location-independent income coming in and we can hit the road.  In the meantime, Michael is still doing solar.  Maybe the RV life will be handy for that since Michael's boss is working on opening a few new areas and we could easily move to those areas.  It's a big motorhome and we have plenty of space to store the things we use most often.  We took everything but the bare essentials to the storage unit and have slowly been moving more of the luxeries into the RV as we have wanted them and know we had space for them.  We've even started doing school again.  I'm looking forward to using fewer materials, but using them consistently.

Here's a bedtime moment I captured, I hope you enjoy it!

Update

Our life has been a little crazy lately, with a lot of unanswered questions as far as what we are doing and where we are living.  I haven't been able to give people a straight answer because, well, we don't know ourselves what we are doing.  Ha!  "Lead Kindly Light" has been an inspiring song for Michael and I as we keep coming back to the line "One step enough for me."

Did we move out of our home?  Yes, a week ago.

Did we sell our motorhome?  No, the lovebirds that were going to sail off into the sunset in it broke up, and the second potential buyer's home buyer fell through.  We have a few other people interested in it, we still might sell it.

Wait, you're selling your motorhome?  Well, we did put it up for sale because we were thinking that we bit off more than we could chew with the leaky roof and some other repairs that needed to be done.  I also wonder about having such a big rig, especially when we start to travel.  But now we're wondering if we should just fix it up anyway at this point.  At any rate, we still own it.

Is Michael still doing solar?  Yes.  We're going to give it another go.  We have struggled with sales, but there are some great potential deals in the pipeline.  But we are also moving forward with other business pursuits to keep our family afloat, namely my music website, www.teaching-children-music.com.  I've been working hard behind the scenes to make some new materials, and I'm actually very excited about them.  Internet marketing has been a dream of Michael's, and making music materials has been a long-time dream of mine, so I am hopeful that we can make it work together.

Where are you now?  We are visiting Utah.  When we thought we had sold the motorhome, we made plans to visit family until we could purchase a new rig and get our feet under us again.  We feel like we needed to visit our elderly grandfathers, and it's always nice to see our siblings and parents.  We went to Cache valley for a few days and we are now in Vernal.  But we plan on going back to California early next week.  Our landlady would probably appreciate it if we didn't keep the motorhome in her driveway indefinitely.  She's been an angel to work with.  My Dad was able to give Michael some great pointers on RV repair, as well as some aluminum he's had in storage for some time that will aid in a do-it-yourself roof repair that feels more doable now.  We're not homeless, we've got an RV.

Money has been very tight, but we purchased a Legoland pass last January, and we had a wonderful opportunity to go Brick-or-Treating before we moved.  It feels a little surreal to be pinching pennies like we have, and to sandwich a theme park visit in the middle.  It was so enchanting.  While most of the things they passed out along the Brick-or-Treat trail was small treats, there was actually a $10 Lego set at one stall- how neat!  At the end of the day, we happened to be on the boat ride when they paused the ride so we could enjoy the fireworks.  There wasn't a better place to watch them in the whole park.  There were people on stilts, jugglers, and loads of extra little attractions, such as an futuristic girl with a theremin-type contraption to communicate with aliens, and a man in a fortune-telling booth that scared the kids because they didn't expect to see a real man in an arcade-like box.  We went swimming in the Lego Chima wave pool too.  Imagine that in October!  Anyway, we have really enjoyed our Legoland passes and have made some great memories there.

How are the kids?  They've been real troopers.  I'm impressed with how they have taken everything in stride.  With the crazy move, I let them have a lot of screen time and we have developed some bad habits.  School hasn't been a priority this last month; I've been resting on my laurels in a way I know I wouldn't have if they were "behind".  But I did bring supplies with us, and we started up again here in Vernal.  I love doing school with them, and it's been nice for Grandma and Grandpa Spackman to see what we do.  Piano has been a great exception to our slacking nature during the chaos.  Something has clicked for Peter and Helen and they now rather enjoy piano and they need little prompting to practice, especially Helen.  Yay!  They are also starting Saxon 5/4, which is a big milestone for us.  Having the two big kids doing mostly the same work has been very nice for me.  Peter is more advanced by his own right, but it shows more in his reading material than anything else.  Peter doesn't like writing and Helen loves it, so there you have it.  We struggle with writing and spelling, but we are working on it.  Patrick is playing Big Brainz by himself, and is working through the John Thompson primer.  Ruth is mostly just playing starfall lately, just because she can do it on her own.  I do the BrillKids programs with her, including a few books I brought with us, but that's about it.  I also brought our educational DVDs which we use sporadically.  She is beginning to sing more, and overall is becoming more verbal.  Philip is beginning to crawl and sit up on his own.  He is friendly and lets most people hold him.  He gets a lot of compliments both on what a big baby he is, and especially what a happy baby he is.  It's true, he really is a little sunshine in our life.  Assuming he gets to be a part of the action, that is.  Like most babies, he prefers to be held most of the time.  It's been so nice to visit family.

A new chapter of our life is starting soon!